Hear no evil, see no evil, don't look hard and cover up the mess

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Today's revelations that despite repeated Government assurances to the contrary, an Australian military lawyer in Baghdad knew as early as October about allegations of prisoner abuse in Iraqi jails and had reported it to his superiors, could cause the Prime Minister a lot of political pain.

As with many scandals, it's the cover-up that is most damning.

Major George O'Kane was given a difficult job in extremely trying conditions.

He found himself in the middle of what was to emerge as the greatest disaster of an already fraught campaign to invade, occupy and impose a new friendly government in Iraq.

How diligently he did his job remains uncertain. No question, the International Committee of the Red Cross was initially most unhappy with the responses to its allegations that it got back from US military headquarters, where Major O'Kane was stationed.

But accounts to the Herald from well-informed sources suggest that Major O'Kane did grapple honestly enough with the issue and, crucially, reported at least some details of the abuse to his Australian military superiors in regular reports.

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What is certain is the Federal Government and the Department of Defence have engaged in a cover-up, either by suppressing information or adopting its customary "don't tell us what we don't want to hear" policy when it comes to accountability and relations between political and bureaucratic arms of government.

On May 10, the national security committee of cabinet vowed to find out all it could about Australian knowledge of the abuses in Iraqi prisons.

It either didn't look very hard or ignored what it found.

This week the Defence Department, following inquiries by the Herald, sent an email on its top-secret network to about 100 personnel asking if they witnessed abuse or visited Abu Ghraib.

Why would such an email be necessary? Defence had already said it had no knowledge of the allegations of torture and abuse.

More to the point, the Herald didn't ask only if abuse had been witnessed but inquired whether "Australians at [US military] headquarters liaised with the Red Cross", "read the Red Cross reports" or "were appraised of the concerns of the Red Cross about detainees".

In Major O'Kane's case - and possibly other Australian officers - the answer was yes to all three.

With grand deception its stock in trade, Defence public relations responded last night by saying only that there were "no witnesses to abuse".

The removal from the Defence website of a photo of Major O'Kane at the Abu Ghraib prison speaks volumes.